Don’t Talk Yourself Out of Having a Good Time

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These were some of the thoughts bouncing around in my mind yesterday as I wondered if I should attend a free tour of Yorkville, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Toronto.

The Royal Ontario Museum has a series of these tours to teach people about the history and architecture of various parts of our city. I’d been curious about them for a long time but hadn’t actually tried one yet.

You might really like it.

This was the thought that convinced me to go.

Our guide was incredible. She pulled us back two hundred years in the past as she described how the town of York was first built. There are high-rise buildings and roads full of traffic where there was once a little cemetery at the outskirts of a community that was so small they had to scribble down names from the graveyard in order to look like they had enough citizens to become incorporated.

Turn the clock back a few decades before that, and it was a toll road that farmers tried to avoid to save some money. The people living back then had to periodically change the location where they collected tolls to catch the sneaky farmers.

I felt like I’d travelled back through time during the tour. I could all but hear the sounds of bleating animals being lead to market and see fireman from long ago sticking their heads out of the tower on top of their hall to see if any of the houses in the surrounding community were on fire. It’s hard to imagine this part of Toronto ever being that small and rural, but it sure was!

The building with the blue doors at the beginning of this post was another highlight of the walk. It was once a Congregationalist church, but is now the home base for a society for creative women.

While I was definitely nice to go home and cool off after it ended, I’m so glad I took the tour.

It can be very easy to talk yourself out of trying something you’ve never tried before.

There’s always other stuff to fill your day with instead: chores, volunteer commitments, kids, pets, social media, work, and other obligations.

Sometimes, though, you’ve got to make space in your life for new experiences.

Don’t listen to that little voice in your mind that lists all of the things you should be doing instead or all of the reasons why you shouldn’t try it.